The Value Horse Method

End of four week trial of the method and no question that it works. In winter racing, with the frequent withdrawals and the cancelled meetings, it wont make you rich, due to the stringent rules governing what is an acceptable bet, but it is a safe & reliable earner and with serious stakes, would produce a very acceptable profit. In the summer season, one might expect a very good income from it. After this trial, I would be comfortable with much larger stakes than I used here, because the strike rate makes this a very safe investment.

The author says that this is a learning method as well as a betting system and will teach you what you should look for in a race. He urges you to make your own decisions once you have absorbed the principles of betting on the value horses, while giving good guidelines on how you should proceed. I have to admit that I have struggled previously with the concept of value in a bet but this system has opened my eyes and has changed the way I look at betting.

Due to the above seasonal limitations, we only had 15 days with qualifying races and only 23 of those races offered bets which were acceptable under the rules, which I applied rigorously. With up to 36 races on a summer schedule, you might expect many more races to be worth looking at and perhaps 3 to 5 bets to be viable, which would naturally increase your potential earnings.

Once youve found a suitable candidate, you use the calculator which is provided to structure your bet. This is where the clever bit comes in: you can choose your own level of risk here and set up the bet accordingly. You juggle the stake and the risk to suit your personal preference, secure in the knowledge that you are risking only the point value which you have set for your bank, perhaps even less. You can balance the potential profit against the risk you want to accept, the more risk, the more profit, it’s up to you. The VHM is as much a trading system as a betting method and it works very well.
These results were obtained by checking the meagre cards at around 10.30, it usually taking about 15 minutes to isolate any suitable bets. You very quickly learn to recognise suitable races, then you do some further checking to see if the figures will work. You would naturally expect that with many more races on a day in the summer, you might spend 30-40 minutes on this process but that is all you have to do. There is no requirement to monitor every race during the day, the need to do this is something which has ruled out most systems for me.

It is necessary to have accounts in sufficient credit with a number of the leading bookmakers so you can get the best odds, because, as the author stresses, you must try to get the best possible odds for your bets, as this is a basic element of a value bet and even a couple of points can add up to a large difference at the end of the year. This obviously means that you need accounts with up to 10-15 bookies, not forgetting the cover required with Betfair. However, a £500 bank will cover these requirements initially and enable careful balancing of the accounts and the shuffling of funds to wherever needed. Actually, the odds don’t move much, if at all, at the time you are looking to place bets, so it should really be possible to fund the appropriate bookie as required.

I would stress that this is not betting for fun; it is, if you embark upon it, a serious betting investment business and should be treated as such. You must keep accurate records and keep on top of the shifting of funds which will be required, moving money in & out of bookies and Betfair, as needed. In other words, there is work involved after the races are finished for the day. Isnt that awful? However, the outcome is almost certainly a very satisfactory profit. I hope that anybody who would pay £99 for a betting system would not treat the investment lightly, so you must ask yourself before you do whether you are prepared to give up speculative or fun betting for good and commit the necessary time and effort to this as a serious business. You will be well rewarded if you do.

Stats are:

Starting bank £500

Finishing bank £600.44

Betting days from 28 15

Bets taken 23

Success rate 69.57%

ROI 13.26%

During the last two weeks, I also found four more bets which I would have been happy to take and despite them not quite reaching the standard of proof required by my rigorous application of the rules, three of them were successful. This is a system which allows you to choose your own level of risk/profit ratio and I chose to be very cautious, which undoubtedly affected the overall result. However, as the author says, once you are comfortable with the method, you can make your own judgements as to what risk you are prepared to take. A further point is that the ROI figure quoted above is the normal one where one equates the profit against the amount staked. However, in this case, if one considered the amount actually risked, as opposed to staked on the bets, the figure would read well over 50%.

Although I completed a months trial of this system at the end of December, I was intrigued by the success it enjoyed then and was keen to see if using it a little more adventurously, as I suggested at that time, would pay off. Therefore, I decided to carry on for another month for my own interest, with a view to using it personally subsequently if the results were confirmed.

Although I began to realise that I was being a bit too cautious during my first month, I felt I had to carry on to the end of that test without changing the conditions, so I continued to screw the risk on the bets right down and despite that, achieved a very good strike rate and a respectable profit, as I reported

Starting out in January however, I eased the risk limiting slightly, giving the strike rate a chance to show it’s muscles and the result was indeed better. Still held the good rate of successful bets, even improved it slightly and just about doubled the previous months result. Although the weather still didnt help, with many cancelled meetings, there were about 50% more bets in January, some probably due to me easing my acceptance levels slightly and the profit per successful bet was higher. Still sticking to my £10 level stakes, the paper result was £197 made in the 28 days.

Anyone taking on this method will have to accept that there arent a huge number of bets on the average day, although I expect this will increase when the weather relents. The author says that one may expect only 15% of races to qualify and I would add the rider that the calculation of the possibilities doesnt always justify a bet even then, though this depends on your level of acceptance of return and risk. You have complete control of what you will accept as a decent bet and risk and I suspect that you might become quite bold when you become really familiar with the method. I have no hesitation whatever in saying that this is that rarest of beasts, a system which actually works.

For the present poor level of bets from these weather-stricken meetings, a £300 bank would probably handle the £10 staking I have used, but when the better weather and hopefully more bets show up, I think something more like the £500 I originally set would be necessary. However, the results suggest that the bank would probably grow to meet that need, by then.